Program Goals

Today, too few students are ready for college. Next Generation Learning Challenges is a collaborative, multi-year initiative created to address the barriers to educational innovation and tap the potential of technology to dramatically improve college readiness and completion in the United States.

We believe that investing in transformative learning strategies that leverage proven and emerging learning technologies, collecting and sharing evidence of what works, and fostering a community of innovators and adopters will result in a robust pool of solutions and greater institutional adoption. This in turn will dramatically improve the education in the United States.

Educators, institutions, and entrepreneurs are developing and testing many potentially breakthrough strategies, but too often they have little awareness of one another and few opportunities to share their innovations. They need support to refine and rigorously test their solutions, to connect with like-minded innovators, and to develop strategies to broaden their reach and impact. NGLC’s goals include providing that support - and ending “innovation isolation” by advancing proven models that catalyze rapid and significant improvements in college readiness and success.

Consider the following statistics:

Nearly 30 percent of students do not finish high school. The dropout rate among African Americans, Hispanics, and low-income students is nearly 50 percent.
Only 42 percent of young people who enroll in college complete a bachelor’s degree by the age of 26. Just 12 percent complete an associate’s degree. Among low-income students, the baccalaureate completion rate is just 26 percent, while only about 14 percent earn an associate’s degree.
By 2018, 63 percent of all U.S. jobs will require some sort of postsecondary education.
In 2008, the average wage for adults 25 and older with a four-year degree was $60,954, compared to $33,618 for those with only a high school diploma and $24,686 for those with no high school diploma.
Nearly 22 million new workers with postsecondary degrees will be needed by 2018, but it is estimated that the U.S. higher education system will fall short of that number by 3 million graduates.